As nearly everyone here at CruxForums knows by now, I am not in the least bit responsible for causing the infamous CruxForums site crash of the summer of 2013. Yet, being as isolated and bored as everyone else during this pandemic, I’ve been amusing myself lately by delving into my ancestry. And, low and behold, I’ve discovered that miscues and calamity, intentional or not, have been Moore or less a plague of sorts throughout the family line.
So, I’ve decided to start this thread on which I plan to share some of the Moore remarkable of those ancestral misadventures in the form of a series of short ... Moore believable than not vignettes ... the first of which is the true story behind the sinking of RMS Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
1. The Sinking of the Titanic
The principal in this familial misadventure was my Great Great Aunt Agnes Moore. Prior to the Titanic’s fateful maiden voyage, Agnes had been employed for a number of years by a Lord Wragg as a housemaid at Cruxton Abbey, earning £15 per annum.
However, after repeated miscues, resulting in the breakage of priceless family crystal and china, as well as the unnecessary spillage of much port and whisky, and after the failure on numerous occasions of corporal discipline administered late at night on her tight little by Wragg personally, either with her locked in the stocks located in the cellar of the Abbey or bound spreadeagled to a four poster bed in his own quarters, the good man decided the poor clumsy girl was utterly hopeless (even though a delightful piece between the sheets) and regretfully fobbed her off, for a good price, in the spring of 1912, as a maid to an acquaintance, one Phineas Tree, who had just booked passage on the Titanic’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
On April 14, well out in the North Atlantic, the Titanic’s radio operators began to receive warnings ... six in all ... from other ships that had sighted potentially dangerous bergs and ice floes. The ship’s Captain, who was hoping, at the time, to break the Atlantic crossing speed record, dismissed the warnings and ordered full steam ahead ... trusting, as he said, that lookouts in the crow’s nest 29 meters (95 fee) above the deck, would give adequate warning of any impending danger.
No one knew for certain what Great Great Aunt Agnes and her new employer had been up to, but survivors reported afterward that from outside the door of a good many first class cabins, wild screams and moans, cries of both ecstasy and pain, as well as a woman’s cursing, could be heard throughout the night. The fact that Phineas Tree, that night, sat up into the early morning hours in the first class salon, smoking, drinking, and chuckling as he counted and recounted a growing wad of banknotes, suggests that he, with Agnes’ help, were into something quite profitable.
Meanwhile, the last ditch attempt by an inexperienced helmsman to avoid a head on collision with a looming iceberg, was attempted belatedly, without the Captain on the bridge, resulting in a gaping gash being torn in the steel plating of the unsinkable liner’s side.
And of course, an unanswered question regarding the disaster has always been: where was the Captain at that critical moment?
There were reports that the Captain had been drinking heavily in the first class salon that night, as he often did, and that he had disappeared from there, presumably to his quarters, just prior to the moment of disaster. We’ll never know for sure what he was doing in his cabin at that critical moment because he went down with his ship.
Oddly though, when rescued by the RMS Carpathia the next day, Great Great Aunt Agnes was said to have been found afloat, totally naked and bound spreadeagled on what was believed to have been the Captain’s cabin bed ... a fact that never came to light, though, in any official sense as it was quickly suppressed by solicitors in the service of the White Star Line.
I’m told that Great Great Aunt Agnes, who lived well in America due to a fat settlement following the disaster, never wanted to talk about what happened. But as I rummaged about in an old chest belonging to her in the interest of researching my ancestral past, I did come across this astonishing photo of her spreadeagled naked on what appears to have been one of the Titanic’s luxury cabin beds,
So, I’ve decided to start this thread on which I plan to share some of the Moore remarkable of those ancestral misadventures in the form of a series of short ... Moore believable than not vignettes ... the first of which is the true story behind the sinking of RMS Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
1. The Sinking of the Titanic
The principal in this familial misadventure was my Great Great Aunt Agnes Moore. Prior to the Titanic’s fateful maiden voyage, Agnes had been employed for a number of years by a Lord Wragg as a housemaid at Cruxton Abbey, earning £15 per annum.
However, after repeated miscues, resulting in the breakage of priceless family crystal and china, as well as the unnecessary spillage of much port and whisky, and after the failure on numerous occasions of corporal discipline administered late at night on her tight little by Wragg personally, either with her locked in the stocks located in the cellar of the Abbey or bound spreadeagled to a four poster bed in his own quarters, the good man decided the poor clumsy girl was utterly hopeless (even though a delightful piece between the sheets) and regretfully fobbed her off, for a good price, in the spring of 1912, as a maid to an acquaintance, one Phineas Tree, who had just booked passage on the Titanic’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York.
On April 14, well out in the North Atlantic, the Titanic’s radio operators began to receive warnings ... six in all ... from other ships that had sighted potentially dangerous bergs and ice floes. The ship’s Captain, who was hoping, at the time, to break the Atlantic crossing speed record, dismissed the warnings and ordered full steam ahead ... trusting, as he said, that lookouts in the crow’s nest 29 meters (95 fee) above the deck, would give adequate warning of any impending danger.
No one knew for certain what Great Great Aunt Agnes and her new employer had been up to, but survivors reported afterward that from outside the door of a good many first class cabins, wild screams and moans, cries of both ecstasy and pain, as well as a woman’s cursing, could be heard throughout the night. The fact that Phineas Tree, that night, sat up into the early morning hours in the first class salon, smoking, drinking, and chuckling as he counted and recounted a growing wad of banknotes, suggests that he, with Agnes’ help, were into something quite profitable.
Meanwhile, the last ditch attempt by an inexperienced helmsman to avoid a head on collision with a looming iceberg, was attempted belatedly, without the Captain on the bridge, resulting in a gaping gash being torn in the steel plating of the unsinkable liner’s side.
And of course, an unanswered question regarding the disaster has always been: where was the Captain at that critical moment?
There were reports that the Captain had been drinking heavily in the first class salon that night, as he often did, and that he had disappeared from there, presumably to his quarters, just prior to the moment of disaster. We’ll never know for sure what he was doing in his cabin at that critical moment because he went down with his ship.
Oddly though, when rescued by the RMS Carpathia the next day, Great Great Aunt Agnes was said to have been found afloat, totally naked and bound spreadeagled on what was believed to have been the Captain’s cabin bed ... a fact that never came to light, though, in any official sense as it was quickly suppressed by solicitors in the service of the White Star Line.
I’m told that Great Great Aunt Agnes, who lived well in America due to a fat settlement following the disaster, never wanted to talk about what happened. But as I rummaged about in an old chest belonging to her in the interest of researching my ancestral past, I did come across this astonishing photo of her spreadeagled naked on what appears to have been one of the Titanic’s luxury cabin beds,
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